Did anyone else see Elvis Costello on TV the other day talking about playing songs and then, well, playing some songs? I think it was on E Television or something, but I haven't read about it anywhere. He was pretty damned good, and he ended the show by doing a full verision of "Watching The Detectives" by showing off his gadgetry.

We missed the Mercury Rev / The Shins show on Wednesday because our tickets never showed up from Ticketmaster. It was OK in the end though, 'cause this snotty illness would have prevented proper head bobbing duties anyway. Still, the ticket-meisters best give my money back for the tickets that never arrived. I wonder if the show was good or not.

After work today I was sitting at my desk when I looked over at our older lizard, Bruce (named after Miss Rodeo America's favorite Kid In The Hall), and something seemed wrong. Sparing you the details, I climbed up on my chair and took the lid off his cage. Miss Rodeo America reached in, picked him up, and suddenly he died in her hands.

Subtitle City: We've watched a lot of movies since, you know, that's what you do when you're sick. Three out of four have been from Asia, including The Seven Samurai, Yi-Yi (an favorite of mine from a couple years ago), and, last night, To Live, which made me want to own half of the Cultural Revolution artwork displayed. I swear, I'd have huge posters of workers triumphing over the capitalist menace everywhere if I could. Of course, with all of this seriousness, we had to sandwich the Mystery Sciene Theater 3000 version of Space Mutiny in there somewhere. Boy, that's a freaky bad movie.

I've eaten nothing but soup for the last couple of days, but last night I had a glass of wine and I swear, when I woke up this morning I felt ten times better.

(listening to: John Fahey:Return Of The Repressed: The John Fahey Anthology)

Sniff sniff, drip drip: I'm sick. Actually, MRA and I are *both* sick which makes things not that much fun at all. Oh, and my car is broken and in the shop waiting for parts, which makes things *really* not fun. This morning I had to go to work even though I had enough snot to fill a pint glass, but I had to get up at 6:30, walk fifteen minutes to the subway, transfer trains, then walk twenty-five minutes to work. All this for what I usually do in a fifteen minutes drive, oh, yeah, and I'm sick, so walking in the cold fog probably wasn't helping me any.

Work actually wasn't all that bad, and I thanked my lucky stars for the cloud cover overhead preventing the sun from heating up Sonoma county like it did last week. Ate some soup for lunch, drank a magic Odwalla drink, chugged a Sobe, and continued on my way. Picked up my car out of the shop on my way home, now sitting in pajamas at 5:45 all clean and recuperating.

MP3 of the week: I created this section because I figured there were about four songs a month that I found to be exceptional, or that framed a moment so well that it couldn't escape my brain. That boils down to about a song a week, hence, voila! The MP3 of the week. This song for this week is a tune so grand in so many ways that it makes me say "Fucking Right On." From next month's new, uh, Framing Hips, album, "Fight Test" gets me grinning.